Visiting Namungoona Primary School Thursday 7-2-09
Today we visited Namungoona Orthodox Primary where Kenneth is the Headmaster. He spoke with us at length about school fees, budgeting challenges, and corruption at the top level of government. Of course, this conversation reminded me of Maplewood faculty meetings when Mr. Lazaro presents the budget for next year and we find out what more has been “cut” and discuss how we will manage those cuts.
The financial concerns of schools here are different than those we have at home. We are not losing money to feed our students lunch and we are not having to decide whether to pay for textbooks or water. (And recognize there isn’t running water at these schools. Water is retrieved in large, 10 Liter jugs and brought to the school. However, Namungoona is in the process of getting a large water tank and as soon as Kenneth can raise the money for gutters, they’ll be able to collect their own rainwater. This will save them a lot of money that can then be used towards other necessities.)
The government supplies 12,900 shillings for each student. (This is approximately $4.00 per student.) This amount is based on a 1997 calculation of school fees and obviously doesn’t account for inflation. Additionally, the government may provide a school that has 500 students with a budget for only 350 students. It costs much more than $4.00/ per student to pay for teachers, building costs, and food.
Students are asked to pay 15,000 shillings for school fees and 15,000 shillings for food per term. (I also found out there are 3 terms here-1 term is 3 months and then students have 1 month off.) However, although schools request that parents pay these fees, schools cannot require them to pay. And so, you have students that stop going to school because they don’t have the money for food at school. Or you have students who pay the school fees but not the food fees and the school feeds them because that may be the only meal that child receives each day. However, the other aspects of the school may suffer because of that expense.
Kenneth said about half of the students at Namungoona pay school fees (or part of the fees) but that this leaves him in a predicament when it comes to any kind of school improvements or additions. For instance, the government is providing the water tank but the gutters cost $100-150 and the government isn’t providing those. If Kenneth can’t get parents to pay school fees, he can’t very well ask for donations for anything extra.
Teachers make about $100.00 US per month and their housing costs could be $25-$50 per month. Teachers have recently been banned from having any kind of part time job. (I would never have made it as a teacher if I hadn’t been able to work a part time job!) Teachers can’t even work during their month off between terms because they are expected to be preparing for the next term’s lessons. There are also 3 “grades” of teachers here: Graduated, Grade 3 and Grade 5. It costs less to pay for a Grade 5 teacher than a Graduated teacher. Kenneth pays 2 teachers with his own (or raised) money because otherwise there are too many students in each class.
District-wide testing is catching on in Uganda so we definitely have that in common! However, their assessment requirements are nowhere near ours. They have begun requiring a continuous assessment of each student beginning in P1 and these assessment documents are very important for a student when they get to P7. At P7, students have to take a National exam and that score, along with their continuous assessments, determine whether or not they continue to S1 (Secondary school). These continuous assessments are specific and lengthy and most classes consist of 50+ students so, you can imagine the time teachers spend on these. (Nevermind grading for 50+ students!) Since school fees have to be paid during P7 in order to receive the assessment records, Kenneth says school fees are somewhat recovered during that year.
